■ Taiwan Strait
Singapore sounds off
Singapore's prime minister warned yesterday that Taiwan's push for independence is potentially the "most dangerous" problem threatening stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) described "three potential flashpoints" in Asia, including North Korea, Kashmir and in the Straits of Taiwan. "Of these, the cross-strait situation is potentially the most dangerous," Lee said in a speech at the APEC Summit in Santiago, Chile, according to a government statement. "A miscalculation or mishap may cause the [cross-strait] problem to escalate and spiral out of control, setting back the whole region and the world," Lee said.
After holding talks with China's President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Lee said they both "agreed that moves toward independence for Taiwan posed a serious threat to regional stability," the statement said.
■ Culture
Conference opens
A UN-affiliated Non-Governmental Organization International Cultural Conference opened yesterday in Taipei. Scholars from home and abroad, including Holland, Hong Kong, India, Japan and the United States, will give speeches and take part in discussions centering on cultural differences between the East and the West during the two-day meeting at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Recent surveys show that more than 80 percent of Taiwan's parents and teachers are worried about a rapid deterioration in social morals and ethics in recent years, a development that is also taking place in the West, organizers said, adding that the main purpose of the conference is to find ways to promote morals, culture and education.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching